48 
Psyche 
[March 
to the ground. The Odonatan was unable to repel its ag- 
gressor, and would have perished from the repeated thrusts 
of the scorpion-fly’s beak, had not Lyonnet interfered. Kirby 
and Spence (1828) describe this encounter in the fifth edi- 
tion of their “Introduction,” and state without reserve that 
the offending insect was Panorpa communis , although there 
was certainly no evidence for this conclusion; and in view 
of the more recent observations it seems clear enough that 
this “tyrant of insect creation” was not a Mecopteron. 
Brauer (1863) fed adult Panorpas on bits of meat and on 
insects which had just been killed. In the “Feuille des 
jeunes naturalistes” for 1880 there is an anonymous note 
describing several specimens of Panorpa communis which 
were eating portions of fish that had been placed upon a 
bank near a stream. Felt (1896) fed adults of one of our 
American species, probably P. canadensis , on injured lepi- 
dopterous larvae, and he was also able to keep one female 
alive for eighteen days on a diet of fresh meat. He be- 
lieved, however, that only the juices were consumed. 
Poulton (1906) saw several European species of Panorpa 
feeding on other Arthropods, but the latter were dead when 
he first examined them. He suggests that the scorpion- 
flies feed only on dead prey. Lucas (1910) mentions one 
Panorpa which was feeding on a “whitish grub.” Cam- 
pion (1915) concluded from several experiments on P. 
communis and P. gervmnica that they feed on dead or 
nearly dead animal matter. Miyake (1912) was convinced 
from his extensive studies on the Japanese P. klugi that 
the food of Panorpas usually consists of dead or injured 
insects, although he saw one female attack a living and 
healthy larva of its own species. Shiperovitsh (1925) 
states that all the investigations on the subject prove that 
the adults of Panorpa are exclusively saprophagous. How- 
ever, the term “saprophagous,” if so used, must be under- 
stood in a very broad sense, for the injured insects and fresh 
meat used by the authors mentioned above could hardly have 
started to decay by the time they were devoured by the 
Panorpas. Also, it must be remembered that some adults 
have been seen feeding on the nectar of flowers and on 
